


depends on the man

by bastaerd



Series: role reversal au [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Role Reversal, bill heather's there also, dr. stanley being a dick, dr. stanley is both dismissive and hypocritical, episode 5- first shot a winner lads, the macca & goodsir conversation but it's stanley & collins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29170719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bastaerd/pseuds/bastaerd
Summary: The assistant surgeon from Erebus was over, he had heard from Dr. Peddie. Collins was the man’s name, built more like a brute than a physician, and Stanley was not surprised to learn that he was not truly a doctor at all, but a naturalist. A glorified student, and here they were at sea, far from the comforts of civilization. How and why McDonald had let him into his sick bay at all, he knew not, but the other doctor had always been more lenient than he.
Series: role reversal au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141250
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	depends on the man

What Private Heather was doing could not be considered sleeping, though if it helped the men to think of it that way, there was little Dr. Stanley could do to stop them. They drew comfort from wherever they could find it, like starved men chewing leather. It grew worse, as the sky darkened, and the day the sun set for the beginning of the long night began the worst of it. A natural phenomenon which begot the most unnatural darkening of attitudes; Stanley had no interest in the unnatural, nor the nonsensical. Curiosity, in his opinion, was only naïvite dressed up as intellectualism. He kept his back turned to Heather while he addressed his sensate patients, whenever they came to him.

The assistant surgeon from Erebus was over, he had heard from Dr. Peddie. Collins was the man’s name, built more like a brute than a physician, and Stanley was not surprised to learn that he was not truly a doctor at all, but a naturalist. A glorified student, and here they were at sea, far from the comforts of civilization. How and why McDonald had let him into his sick bay at all, he knew not, but the other doctor had always been more lenient than he. Prone to giving slack where there was none to spare and calling it generosity.

Collins had come over to escort the Netsilik girl to Terror, walking before her, the bulk of him shielding her from the eyes of the other sailors. He bodyguarded her the whole way to the hold, perhaps with the intention of drawing the men’s eyes to himself to let her pass unbothered, and Stanley lost sight of them then. If the girl was to stay here, then… Stanley could not say he was enthusiastic about the prospect, but if Commander Fitzjames thought it best, it must have been so.

Lieutenant Irving winced as Stanley unwrapped his hands. They had been bandaged thickly about the fingers, his knuckles marked by thin lines of scabbing where his skin had cracked and split in the cold. The lieutenant watched as he worked, peeling off the fraying bandages and tossing them aside with a wrinkled nose.

“Well, Lieutenant,” said Stanley as Irving stared at his hands, “you won’t be losing any digits today. Do invest in a pair of gloves so we need not bring out the cutters the next time you visit.”

Irving nodded, ducking his head as if he were the subordinate officer before seeming to remember himself. “Right,” he said. Thank you, doctor.”

“As for the scabs, a thin salve will do to keep the skin from splitting.” Stanley did away with the old bandages and then scrubbed his hands with a damp cloth. “Dr. Peddie will administer it tomorrow.”

Another nod from the lieutenant. “Yes,” he said, and looked conflicted about it for reasons Stanley neither knew nor cared to delve into.

“Well, then. There you are.”

For a moment, Irving did not stand from the chair, and, were he one of the able seamen or a boy, Stanley might have asked him if he required a formal invitation. As it was, Irving quickly realized that he was being dismissed, or, rather, that there was nothing else the doctor had to say to him unless he spontaneously came down with something. He shot a glance towards where Heather lay in his cot, brain shrouded like a bride under her veil, and, nodding once more, left.

The next visitor to Dr. Stanley’s sickbay was Collins, which was a surprise, since he had arrived with the Netsilik girl and disappeared down into the hold with her. Stanley had had half a mind that the two of them would stay there with the bodies of Hornby and the other not-so-luckies who had lost their lives to the elements-- perhaps that would then allow him some peace. This was not to be, thought Stanley with a sigh as he raised his head from his reading and met the eyes of Henry Collins from where he stood in the doorway. It was a small passage, a swinging coffin lid of a thing, but Collins might have blocked the entrance to the great cabin with his bulk. How he could maneuver in Erebus’ sickbay, Stanley knew not; perhaps he could not, and his patients suffered for his fumbling and bumbling. It was difficult to imagine his large hands conducting such fine work as surgery.

“Mr. Collins,” Stanley greeted him with a tone of voice that suggested he would rather read his obituary. “I might say, ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ but as you are not a doctor-”

“I came to see if you might need any help,” said Collins. “I’m to be berthed on Terror awhile-”

“Awhile?”

“As long as the Lady Silence is aboard, yes.” Collins finally stepped into the sickbay, unblocking the door and casting his silhouette across the room, nearly from one end to the other. Stanley moved his book back into the light. The prospect of sharing his sickbay with this brute, especially while he still worked with Dr. Peddie, did not inspire much joy in him. “I thought I might as well make myself of use here, too.”

Stanley crooked an eyebrow at him, his head tilted at such an angle so that, even seated, he regarded Collins down the length of his nose. “And how do you suppose you will make yourself of use otherwise?” he asked, and enjoyed the way it made Collins straighten up and look chastened. The moment lasted only briefly, though, before he regained himself and answered.

“I came here with the girl,” he explained. “The Lady Silence, the men are calling her. She ought to have someone who can guard her, who speaks English.”

“She is surrounded, Mr. Collins,” said Stanley, “by men who speak English.”

“Someone who would defend her against men who act untowards,” Collins went on. “And she may respond better to a friend, if she has one, than to strangers.”

A friend was about as useful out here, in Stanley’s opinion, as was a train ticket. If the girl had not answered to Crozier or to Mr. Blanky, or even to Dr. McDonald, from Erebus, then she had been given a fairer shake than she rightly deserved and was of no value to them or their survival and eventual escape, and ought to be jettisoned to lighten their load. A friend to her would only coddle her and encourage more wastage of their limited resources to sustain her when she had obviously been doing perfectly well far away from them.

“A friend,” Stanley pronounced.

“A friend,” said Collins. There was something hard about his eyes. It might have been determination or stupidity; often the two were inexorably related, such as the stomach and the bowels. Arguing with stupidity, therefore, was much like arguing with the bowels: it could only end with shit on one’s face. Stanley sighed, raised his eyebrows in a way that made it clear his assent was only reluctant and against his better judgment.

“I’ve nothing for you at the moment,” he said at last. “As you can see, business isn’t exactly bustling. With ten or so men to Terror and the rest to Erebus, three surgeons for the skeleton crew is an obscene excess.” He fixed Collins with a disapproving stare. “Were I Captain Fitzjames, I would have kept you to Erebus and sent the Netsilik girl here alone, as the  _ bear _ is certainly no threat to her.”

Collins’ jaw worked, as if he were chewing a tough piece of meat. When he opened his mouth again, he said, “Truthfully, doctor, that is not the only reason I’ve come to speak to you. If I preferred, I would have avoided your sick bay entirely, but something has occurred that requires the attentions of all our surgeons.”

“Something has occurred on Erebus?” Stanley asked. “I’ve not heard of anything happening that would require my attention.”

Here, Collins hesitated. He looked back over his shoulder at the door through which he had come and cocked his head like a large, shaggy dog listening for its master. As empty as the ship was now, there were few by which he could be overheard, and certainly the men who had escorted him to Terror had departed for Erebus by now while he stayed here in the relative warmth. Still, he listened until it was silent outside the door but for the noises of the ship, which they had all grown used to over their months and years trapped.

“Have you noticed, doctor,” he began measuredly, “men with a line on their gums?”

Stanley blinked. “A line.”

“Yes.” Collins pulled down his lower lip and indicated with his finger a rim along his gumline. “Here, and greyish in color, as if drawn in ash.”

“Mr. Collins, I am a doctor of medicine,” said Stanley with an irritated sigh, “not a veterinarian. I do not make it a habit to examine my patients’ teeth when they arrive with toes to be snipped or blisters to be soaked.”

Collins’ mouth opened and then closed again, his lip still jutting out from where he had pulled it and giving him the appearance of a pouting child. Whatever he had intended to say seemed to evaporate, as well it should have done. “Has he woken at all?” he asked instead.

“Pardon?”

Collins inclined his head, his eyes focusing on a spot behind Stanley. “Private Heather,” he said. Indeed, Collins had been the one to apply the wax to the man’s eyelids, pouring it from such a height that it had partially cooled by the time it touched his skin, and smoothing it out into two small wax disks. No sense in going the extra mile in order to prevent burns to a veritable corpse. The only thing else to do would be to place a coin on his tongue. Stanley had never tolerated superstition in his sick bay, no matter how dire the circumstances.

“No,” he answered, without looking over his shoulder to make sure the marine in question had not sat up at the sound of his name. “Private Heather has not awoken. I wouldn’t go placing any bets on him, either. If there is something for which you need him, Collins, you have plenty of other marines from which to choose; I’m sure you shall find them all more capable men than a vegetable.”

Around them, the ice groaned as it adjusted its hold on the ship. Their two shadows, cast against the walls by candlelight, wavered as if they had momentarily lost and then regained their balance.

“I hope he does wake,” said Collins, eyes downcast and darting up. “Wake and recover.”

Sentimentality, Stanley found, shared a role with superstition. Both attached meaning to the meaningless, made magical the mundane. There was no magic to find in the chest cavity, the marrow, the pulp of a man’s brain shining through the opening in his skull-- only life and its presence or absence, the dead and the not-yet-dead. Magic did not pump the heart, nor did it coax a still one into beating once more. Many spoke of a particular sign of life-- a spark behind one’s eyes which indicated their vitality and which disappeared after death. One could see it in a living being and note its absence in the still-open eyes of a corpse, their eyes gone greyish and dry where they could no longer blink, their pupils no longer reacting to the changing light. Their eyes appeared wide and dark even turned towards the light of a candle, or as pinpricks in pitch blackness. Every one of them wore the same expression, one of belated surprise.  _ “Oh,” _ they seemed to say.

The third visitor to Stanley’s sick bay was Peglar, reporting a dull but persistent headache. He sat on a chair beside the table while Stanley soaked a strip of cloth in vinegar and laid it across his head. His bangs, wet already from sweat and from melting frost, dripped into his eyes; he winced, mopping them up off his forehead so they would not stick to the rag.

“A moment, Mr. Peglar,” said Stanley. Seized by a morbid instinct he could not put to words, as if grabbed by the scruff of the neck, he placed his thumb, still wet with vinegar, under Peglar’s upper lip and lifted it from his teeth. Beside him, a candle flickered.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://edward-little.tumblr.com).


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